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in parallel at the interval of a fifth, a fourth, a third, or even a second,12 it is worth noting that the octave parallelism is the only one recognized in the Greek sources and the existence of others is denied.13 |
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Choruses varied considerably in size. A male chorus of seven sang at the Nemean Games at some period.14 The Muses, sometimes represented as singing together, are nine in number, which may or may not reflect an institution of earthly choirs of this size.15 Alcman's first Partheneion was sung by a choir of ten girls, while another Spartan festival, celebrating the wedding of Helen, involved a choir of twelve, at least in the third century BC.16 The choruses of tragedy had twelve members in Aeschylus' time, but subsequently fifteen; those of comedy had twenty-four, and those of the dithyramb fifty. A boys' chorus of thirty-five used to go from Messina to participate in a festival at Rhegium.17 Herodotus mentions a chorus of a hundred young men sent to Delphi by the Chians about 500 BC.18 This is far the largest we hear of in the Classical period. However, at the wedding-feast of a Macedonian grandee about 300 BC a choir of a hundred sang a hymenaeum, while in the grand procession laid on by Ptolemy II at Alexandria, designed to be the greatest show on earth, one of the lesser attractions (preceded by a series of floats full of statues of gods and kings, and followed by 2,000 heavily decorated bulls) was a choir of 600 men, accompanied by thirty citharists.19 Not that huge choirs were de rigueur in the Hellenistic age. An inscription relating to the Delphic Soteria in the year 257/6(?) BC lists men's and boys' choruses consisting of no more than five (professional) singers, and comic choruses of seven. A little over a century later a comedy was put on at Delphi with a chorus of four.20 |
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What kind of sound did the Greek singer seek to produce? According to Curt Sachs,21 |
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Nowhere outside the modem West do people sing with a voice for which we have coined the honorific title of 'natural' . . . to the western ear, all oriental |
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12 See Sachs, WM 177-81. |
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13 Ps.-Arist. Pr. 19. 17-18. |
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14 Or perhaps at the Pythian, since there may be a gap in the text: Hyg. Fab. 273. 7. |
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15 See my note on Hes. Th. 60. A late inscription from Magnesia on the Maeander attests boys' and girls' choirs of nine each in the local cult of Zeus Sosipolis. Cf. also the Hellenistic verses in POxy. 8 (Powell, Coll. Alex. 186. 9). |
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16 Alcm. PMG 1.99; Theoc. Id. 18.4. |
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17 Paus. 5. 25. 2. |
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18 Hdt. 6. 27. 2. |
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19 Hippolochus ap. Ath. 130a; Callixenus, FGrH 627 F 2. 33 (Ath. 201f). |
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20SIG 424; 690. Cf. Sifakis, 71-4, 85. |
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21WM 85. |
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